May 13, 2011

While we’re on the subject of Peyton Place, perhaps it’s time to bring back an occasional feature of this blog. That’s right, it’s time again for “Who Are Those Guys?” in which you, the reader, help put a name to the faces of some of television’s many uncredited small-part actors.

Peyton Place presents a particularly thorny knot of unidentified bit players. Because the show’s regular cast was so large, guest stars were almost always out of luck when it came time to make up an episode’s end titles.

Some of these unfortunate actors made multiple appearances without ever breaking into the credit roll. Jim Boles and then Star Trek’s James Doohan were semi-regulars for a while, playing successive chauffeurs to town patriarch Martin Peyton. Russ Meyer chum Stuart Lancaster – the leering old man from Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! – popped up now and then over the years as Jerry, the printer, in Elliot Carson’s newspaper office.

All of the actors mentioned above are folks I spotted while watching the show. But there are many more that I couldn’t identify. Let’s take a look at just two.

During episodes 52 through 55, Norman Harrington (Christopher Connelly) gets beaten up by a couple of teenaged punks in a storyline that eventually gets him a girlfriend (Patricia Morrow as Rita Jacks). One of the two toughs is played by an uncredited Mickey Dolenz, a year before he became one of The Monkees. Does anyone recognize the other punk (below, left, with Dolenz)?

During episodes 77 through 80, Betty’s high school pal Janet Sinclair enters the maternity ward of the Peyton Hospital. The unmarried Betty (Barbara Parkins) has just found out that she’s pregnant with Rodney’s (Ryan O’Neal) child, so the point of the Janet Sinclair arc is basically to rub salt in her wounds. Janet is played by Bonnie Beecher (unbilled, naturally, and pictured below), an ingenue who appeared on The Twilight Zone and Star Trek before leaving acting to marry Wavy Gravy.

However, I can’t figure out who plays Janet’s husband Bob in two brief scenes. Here he is, between O’Neal and Parkins: